ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF SELF-ASSESSMENT

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF SELF- ASSESSMENT

ADVANTAGES

ü  It can provide the teacher with very practical and functional information about what students want from the course, the progress that they have made, their difficulties, their favorite activities or even some suggestions or improvements that the teacher can implement later on.

ü  Therefore, it helps students to think about their own learning, learning progress and problems, and then, find ways to improve.

ü  If well answered, self- assessment is a very efficient method of getting information, because it gathers direct answers provided by the students themselves.

ü  It is a crucial stage of the learning process; therefore it mustn’t be forgotten or given less importance in the learning or teaching process.

ü  As it was previously mentioned, it is an excellent way for the teacher to identify problems, difficulties or questions that the students may have.

ü  When students are able to analyze their own progress, they can find ways, methods or strategies to make improvements and be better students and learners.

ü  Some students tend to ignore the corrections, suggestions or feedback made by the teachers: but when a learner is somehow forced to correct himself/herself, there exists a higher probability that those errors will be analyzed, and omitted.

ü  There is a very wide variety of techniques for self-assessment, so the teacher can choose the one that she considers best for the class.

ü  As teachers, we can decide when to apply the self-assessment, whether it is applied at the beginning, middle or end of the course.

ü  It helps the students to get a better idea of the goals that they are trying to reach.

ü  It can give feedback to the teacher about the students’ progress, without having the need to correct or revise every single piece of work or homework made by the students, so it can be very time saving.

ü  It is a process that involves actively the students in the classrooms, and gives them the power to evaluate themselves.

ü  It has a direct impact on the learning process.

ü  Gives feedback into the learning process.

ü  Feedback from the self-assessment can give teachers useful information that helps them to plan a lesson.

ü  Students can take responsibility for their own learning.

DISADVANTAGES

ü  Students can be undecided or if they haven’t received enough feedback from the teacher, they may have doubts regarding to the progress that they have made; therefore they can provide wrong answers, making the self-assessment process invalid.

ü  Students need to have a very high degree of consciousness, so they can be able to analyze the errors that they have made, but most importantly, their performance during the course or unit.

ü  Self-assessment can be very time consuming, so as teachers we have to plan it beforehand and write an adequate format, so it doesn’t take students too long to answer it, and so it is easy to check.

ü  Sometimes, it is only suitable for intermediate to higher levels, because they are more aware of the importance of the process, and they analyze a lot easier.

ü  Maybe the most significant disadvantage of all, would be the lack of maturity. Some students are not ready to have a self-assessment task, mostly because they aren’t aware of the seriousness or importance of the process; therefore they tend to give themselves a higher grade, which alters the final result. It can also happen the other way around, but we believe that this is the most common.

ü  Another aspect, very linked to the above one, would be that as teachers, we have to make it clear to students that self-assessment won’t have an important weight on their final grades, otherwise, the same situation as the one mentioned above can repeat itself.

ü  Needs to be integrated with other classroom activities.

ü  It implies knowledge about language and learning which most second language learners don’t have.

ü  Self-assessment only works if students have been trained to self-assess themselves.